Tuesday, August 23, 2005

"SH: Okay, I'm going to go ahead and name some people whom I suspect inside the State Department and the Pentagon, and I suppose you won't be able to answer affirmative or negative on any of these, but I'm very curious when I read about this kind of corruption going on in the State Department, I immediately think of John Bolton and David Wurmser. Do those names mean anything to you?

SE: Well, first of all, I'm not going to answer that question at all, but also you should pay attention to the fact that some of these people have been there for a while, and some of these people had their roots in there even in the mid-1990s.

SH: So more career officials rather than political appointees.

SE: Or maybe a mixture of both."

Who is she referring to? The United States has a peculiar habit of completely changing government officials from administration to administration - is that habit unique amongst sophisticated countries? - and it is quite unusual for a senior bureaucrat to survive from a Democrat President's administration to a Republican President's administration. Who survived from Clinton to Bush? The most prominent figure I can think of is Marc Grossman, who had until his recent retirement and cashing in been Bush's Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Grossman had met with Pakistani General Mahmoud Ahmed when Ahmed was visiting Washington in the week before September 11, 2001. He had had a long career as a professional diplomat, and had been Clinton's ambassador to Turkey (remember that Edmonds' allegations refer to translations of Turkish documents for the FBI). He was appointed by Clinton to be Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs in 1997. From 1984 to 1986, he had been the Deputy Director of the Private Office of Lord Carrington, then Secretary General of NATO. The husband and wife team that Edmonds has fingered for wrongdoing are USAF Major Douglas Dickerson and Melek Can (aka Jan Dickerson). Douglas Dickerson, who had been working for the USAF selling American weapons systems to the 'Stans, was protected by posting him to NATO in Belgium. In the longer version of her interview (the thread, also contains information on the allegations made concerning Turkishbribes to Dennis Hastert), Edmonds said:

"Well, what is interesting with [the] Vanity Fair article, I don't know how many people picked up on that, but they're saying Turkic - Turkish counTRIES. It's a plural, people. And to look and say, OK, you're looking at this region of the world that nobody is referring to in the War Against Terror. OK, you're looking at Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhistan and Uzbekistan, and these are the countries that now we are busy establishing bases in. And a large portion of their GDP depends on narcotics. And there's a presence, Al Qaida presence, in these countries. We don't hear anything about Balkan countries and, again, their direct ties and their direct relevance to Al Qaida. They are not even naming these countries. The role that Pakistan played before and the role that Pakistan is playing today. So, as I said, as I have said before, there are several countries, there are several organizations, and not just say, isolate just one country or one organization."

and, in a similar passage from an interview with Amy Goodman (the transcript is faulty as where it says 'Turkey' is should say 'Turkic'):

". . . what I have said all along is the fact that as far as the 9/11 is concerned, September 11 is concerned, these departments - and when I say 'these departments,' the Department of Justice, the Department of State, and the Department of Defense - have intentionally blocked the investigations of real - the real criminals in this country. And we are talking about countries involved. The Vanity Fair article points out to Turkey - countries. And it's very interesting. To this date, we are not hearing anything about targeting, you know, certain Central Asian countries. They are not speaking about the link between the narcotics and al Qaeda. Yes, we are hearing about them coming down on some charities as the real funds behind al Qaeda, but most of al Qaeda's funding is not through these charity organizations. It's through narcotics. And have you heard anything to this date, anything about these issues which we have had information since 1997? And as I would again emphasize, we are talking about countries. And they are blocking this information, and also the fact that certain officials in this country are engaged in treason against the United States and its interests and its national security, be it the Department of State or certain elected officials."

Edmonds sometimes makes me a bit nervous as she seems overly adept with the terms and arguments of conspiracy theory for someone who is supposed to have been a lowly FBI translator (it's like she's been reading Peter DaleScott!). Is she part of the battle in Washington between the Bush Administration enablers involved in the drugs/arms business who don't mind directly or indirectly supporting al Qaeda if it is good for business, and those old-fashioned types who still consider that dealing with American enemies is treason? We should see the battle concerning the lies created by friends of Israel to trick Americans into the attack on Iraq, and the whole AIPAC scandal, as part of the same larger war. It will be interesting to see who wins: the anything-for-a-buck operators or the American patriots.